I walked up to the door of Wild Birds Unlimited on a recent Saturday morning, key in hand, ready to open the shop.

There on the sidewalk stood an unusual first customer – a juvenile yellow-crowned night-heron checking me out with startlingly orange eyes. My first thought was that someone must have brought it for rehab, but there was no one looking flustered, and no cardboard box.

My next thought was “Drat! I left my camera at home.” Then I remembered the recently acquired point-and-shoot neatly tucked into my purse. I grabbed it and began stalking the night-heron around the fountain. It walked the length of a bench and then studied its reflection in the windows of Party City. About that time, my first human customers showed up.

“Oh, look,” they remarked, “a crane.”

Reluctantly, I returned to my shop-keeping duties.

They stayed to observe the night-heron, and reported that it had flown up into a palm tree.

I know that yellow-crowned night-herons nest in Paradise Park and Windsor Forest, but they don’t usually spend their time in shopping centers. Perhaps this one had been lured by fast food — the goldfish that occasionally “appear” in the fountain.

One of the things I love about watching birds and wildlife is that there are always surprises.

“Serendipity” is defined as “the gift of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for,” or more simply, “happy accident.”

If I hadn’t decided to take out the trash one Tuesday morning, I wouldn’t have seen the two newly hatched killdeer running around in the puddle behind the shop while a parent pretended to have a broken wing in hopes of distracting me from its babies.

If my dad hadn’t gone fishing on Wednesday morning, he wouldn’t have given me a fresh trout for supper. If I hadn’t invited a friend over to help me eat the trout, I wouldn’t have been eating supper on the dock. Had I not eaten supper on the dock, I wouldn’t have seen the otter swimming in the creek.

As the otter swam directly under the dock with something in its mouth, I mentally kicked myself that once again, the camera was in the house. This time, I retrieved it and returned to the dock where my friend was motioning for me to “hurry, hurry.” The otter had crawled up on the neighbor’s floating dock for a session of “roll, scratch, and groom.”

It stretched out full length on its back, rolled from side to side, licked its fur, and performed various otter ablutions, seemingly oblivious to the audience on the next dock. After 15 minutes of such antics, the otter slipped back into the water and swam directly toward us before disappearing into the marsh.

Of course, some close encounters with wildlife are simply accidents, rather than happy accidents. During fall migration, disoriented birds fly into windows, cars, or cell phone towers. The unfortunate ones die, while the lucky ones are simply stunned. The really lucky ones find their way into the hands of a licensed rehabilitator. In late August, Pat Wolters was able to tend and successfully release both a yellow-billed cuckoo and a sora.

These incidents offer an opportunity for close-up looks at some less common bird species. The cuckoo is a secretive summer nester in the Lowcountry, a little larger than a brown thrasher, with a brown back, white throat and chest, and a curved, yellow bill. The sora is a small rail, generally found in freshwater marshes in our area during fall, winter, and spring. Like most rails, they are easier to hear than to see, so having one in the hand was a real treat.

Here’s hoping that your wildlife accidents are happy ones and that you have your camera or smart phone near to hand. Good birding!

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